Eighth Final Four for my teams
Last Final Four was really difficult for us, this Final Four won't be any different.
The fact that we met Tau and Siena this season and defeated each of them both times makes our task much more difficult. These wins might make us too confident and, if this happens, we might end up like CSKA in Moscow Final Four in 2005. So we should be extremely careful about finding the right balance between confidence and overconfidence. If we go to the final, let's say against Siena, everybody will expect us to win. It will be even more difficult to handle this kind of pressure.
This is my eighth Final Four and it's never been easy. It might become easy during the game, though. But if we do the same thing we did with Olympiacos, starting the game focusing on offense and forgetting about the defense, we will give confidence to the other team and it will be a disaster as we don't have a Game 2 now. As I always say, if you don't win the first game, the Final Four becomes the Final Two and you go home. We need to be extremely patient.
It's not good for our team to have so few games between the Euroleague quarterfinal series and the Final Four. But there is nothing we can do about it. Last year, if you remember, we lost in Rostov before the Final Four. A week ago we played an absolutely awful game against Vladivostok. The biggest problem with this moment before the Final Four is that most players are afraid to get injured. It takes away their concentration and bothers them a lot. Second problem, some players become a little bit nervous as if they have to play in the Final Four in two hours. They don't understand that they have to be patient, especially this moment of the year. If we have 10 days before the Final Four, okay, we have to do our routine patiently for 10 days. Go to practice, rest and so on. Some players cannot do this. They are so eager to play and try to win that they go out of sync with the rest of the team.
We try to keep players from over-preparing for the Final Four. We cannot waste their mental energy talking for 10 days about the game with Tau. We have to be realistic. During the regular season we always had two days to prepare for a Euroleague game, no matter how important it was. So if we go for, let's say, a seven day preparation now, we'll be sending the team a wrong message.
Of course, it's different with coaches. We need to prepare and get ready for everything, because if we win the semifinal we'll have only one day to get the team ready for the final. This is where we have to do a better job. In 2006 we won the final, in 2007 we lost it. Now we need to be very well prepared in case we win the semifinal. But we cannot transfer this to the players. It's not time yet.
I heard many people say that this Final Four isn't strong enough. Let me disagree and give you an example. As I already mentioned in one of the previous posts, Siena wasn't a big surprise for me. I expected them to succeed this year. I won't be surprised either if they defeat Maccabi. We had two very difficult games against them. We won the first one by 4 and the second one by 3. In the first game they lost the ball when they were down by 2 and had their last possession, in the second one they missed the last shot, so those were very close games. They defeated Panathinaikos at home by 9, they almost defeated Panathinaikos in Athens (76:77).
They have a very experienced roster with Thornton who was with both Siena and Barcelona in the Final Four, McIntyre who was Italian league MVP last year and Ksistof Lavrinovic. It's extremely dangerous to underestimate Siena saying that they have few big names on the roster. When Kinder won the Euroleague in 2001, we didn't have many big names either. Ginobili was coming from A2 and almost nobody knew him. Almost nobody knew Jaric, Smodis or David Andersen. However we won best of five series against Tau and now they are big names. So don't be obsessed with analyzing rosters. Personally, I cannot make evaluation in terms of big names and small names. I can only make evaluation by telling whether players play well or they play bad. Siena can play very good defense, because they are very good athletes. They have four black players in the starting five and they are extremely athletic. They are very well organized, because I think their coach is an excellent coach. Not just good, but excellent. And I know it will be very difficult for Maccabi.
The stands packed with Maccabi fans will also become a factor. I remember how difficult it was for my team, which was a very experienced team, to overcome the factor of 9 thousands yellow T-shirts in the stands and beat Maccabi in Prague. Even my team started 0-7. Everyone who faces Maccabi has to be prepared. Honestly, if we manage to advance to the final, it will be more difficult for us to face Maccabi, because we know less about them.
As for our team, Van den Spiegel is back to practice and Zisis finished his rehabilitation after he had a knee injury in Saint-Petersburg. He was lucky not to break ligaments after such a hit. He joined the group on Sunday. I hope both of them will be able to play in the Final Four.
